Unfortunately for Chicago, the Bears’ defense has been allowing big holes all season. (The hole Packers running back James Starks ran through might have been the biggest I’ve ever seen.) The Ravens’ line won’t have such an easy time opening holes for Rice this week, against a very good Jets run defense.

My guess is no one on the offensive line was laughing after Rice said this. The offensive linemen have heard for 11 weeks about how bad their run blocking has been that they probably didn't need to be reminded of this after helping Rice to 131 yards rushing, his most in a regular-season game since December 2011.

The decision when to restart the game is made by a group of people, which includes the referee, who have the ultimate authority. But he'll get input from the stadium operations people who have access to the Doppler radar system. Also, the referee will get input from the officiating supervisor in the press box, who will be in contact with the game operations dept. in the NFL offices in New York. With input from all of those people, they will make a decision on when it's safe to resume. If it can't be today, then they will include the commissioner on what the next step should be.

But with about nine minutes left in the fourth quarter, I went down to the field to watch the rest of the game from a tunnel. The wind was howling, with gusts up to 40 miles an hour. Players ran carefully, so as not to slip and fall. The field was a cow pasture, and players, officials and (during TV timeouts) the grounds crew tried to tamp down the turf after the torrential rain ruined it. And I thought: How great it is to see a game in the elements like this. You hate to make the fans wait out a two-hour delay, but would it have been more inconvenient, say, to reschedule the game for Monday at noon? Of all the games I’ve covered, only a Giants preseason game at foggy, rainy Cleveland in the ’80s, at the old Cleveland Stadium, was like this one. I was looking for the ghost of Jim Brown that day; and Sunday, I wondered how many of these games Luckman, Sayers and Butkus played in.

The NFC North should send Joe Flacco a 'thank you' card this week because if he would have led the Ravens to a touchdown against the Bears on the final drive of regulation on Sunday, Chicago would have lost and the NFC North would have gone 0-4 in Week 11. Instead, Flacco couldn't get the Ravens in the end one and the Bears won in overtime. Actually, instead of a 'thank you' card, the NFC North should send Flacco a McDonald's gift certificate so he can buy some Mighty Wings, that way Flacco can concentrate more on his playbook and less on looking for Mighty Wings with Colin Kaepernick.

An NFC North team, looking to get into game-winning field goal range, aligned in a 3 x 1 set with a running back left in to block against the Ravens, who were bringing an extra rusher in Cover 1 (one deep safety), took advantage of a size mismatch to target the tight end on a big gain.

At least they figured out how to get Ray Rice going, but now it's Joe Flacco that needs a kick in the rear. Flacco has five picks in the last three games and his passer rating has decreased in each of the last five.

Their place in the rankings doesn't add up when you look at their results this season. The Ravens are ahead of the Cleveland Browns (No. 23) and Buffalo Bills (No. 25) despite losing to both teams and having the same number of wins as both of them. Among the teams with losing records, the Ravens are the third-highest-ranked team, behind the San Diego Chargers (No. 18) and Pittsburgh Steelers (No. 19).